No search results

RE:fine Drugs Getting Started

The homepage for “RE:fine Drugs” includes a search bar to begin a query. Drug repurposing hypotheses can be initiated from any of the following three categories: drug (generic drug name), disease (new disease indication we found in our study) or gene (official HGNC gene symbol).

The search bar includes an auto-fill function for query entries, and can be filtered to include only “Drug Name”, “New Disease Indication”, “Gene Symbol” or “All” categories. In this example, the gene “IL2RB” was entered and was automatically recognized as such.

After clicking the “Search” button, a table of results is produced. See the “Database Element Dictionary” below for a complete list of terms and their definitions. Users can sort by any of the following columns. The total number of drug repurposing hypotheses are provided, in this case there are 12.

Clicking on the “advanced” button on the right side of the page, several options to further refine the results are provided. In addition, users can export results by clicking on the “Export” button on the right side of the page. Clicking on the “Simple” button will hide the advanced search options. The advanced search options include modifications to the following: drug, association, disease, potential, gene and action. In this example, all results for the drug “daclizumab” are returned.

Checking the Info option under the drug tab will enable Info column in the results table and will show icon on the very most left cell of each row. Clicking on the symbol in the “Info” column for a particular drug, users will be taken to a page listing the corresponding P-Value for the association, Disease name, Drug name, Gene details (NCBI Gene link) and Drug details (DrugBank link).

Under the “association” tab, users can filter results by the significance level (P-value), effect size (Odds Ratio), and/or Study type (GWAS, PheWAS or Both). In this case, eight results are shown for associations in a range of P-Value 0.000001 to 0.05.

Under the “disease” tab, users can specify a certain disease by description (e.g. disease name) for the predicted new indication. In this example, all drug repurposing candidates that are hypothesized for asthma are returned.

Under the “potential” tab, users can filter results according to the following criteria: (i) whether the drug indication is contained in the DrugBank database, (ii) number of Medline abstracts with co-occurrence of the drug and the disease, (iii) number of ClinicalTrials.gov database entries with co-occurrence of the drug and the disease and (iv) Repurposing Potential (see Dictionary below).

Under the “gene” tab, users can enter a SNP identifier or Gene Symbol to filter results by specific drug target genes. In this case, all results are targeted for the “IL2RB” gene.

Under the “action” tab, users can specify the drug action type against the drug target(s), including agonist, antagonist, other, unknown or all (source: DrugBank database). In this example, all agonists acting on the IL2RB gene target are shown.

Database Element Dictionary

Info: More information about this drug. Click on the symbol, and you will be taken to a page listing the corresponding P-Value for the association, Disease name, Drug name, Gene details (NCBI Gene link) and Drug details (DrugBank link).

Drug: Generic or brand name of the drug. Examples: doxazosin, acitretin.

Registered Indication: Original indication provided by the DrugBank database.

RE:fine Drugs FAQ

About

The process of discovering new drugs has been extremely costly and slow in the last decades despite enormous
investment in pharmaceutical research. Drug repurposing enables multidisciplinary researchers to speed up
the process of discovering other conditions that existing drugs can effectively treat, with low cost
and fast FDA approval. Here we introduce "RE:fine Drugs", a freely available interactive website for
integrated search and discovery of drug repurposing candidates from GWAS and PheWAS repurposing
datasets constructed using previously reported methods in Nature Biotechnology
[1,
2].
"RE:fine Drugs" demonstrates the possibilities to identify and prioritize novelty of candidates for
drug repurposing based on the theory of transitive Drug-Gene-Disease triads. This public website
provides a starting point for research, industry, clinical, and regulatory communities to accelerate
the investigation and validation of new therapeutic use of old drugs.

Citing

We ask that users cite the RE:fine Drugs paper in any resulting publications.
Use and re-distribution of RE:fine Drugs data, in whole or in part, for
commercial purposes requires explicit permission of the authors and explicit acknowledgment of the source
material and the original publication.

Usage

The content of RE:fine Drugs is intended for educational and scientific
research purposes only. It is not intended to be used for professional medical advice, diagnosis or
treatment. Although the authors tried their best efforts to deliver the best information, no warranty
is made regarding the completeness, accuracy, timeliness, validity or utility of the data that may lead
to any commercial loss or damage.

Privacy Policy

By using the RE:fine Drugs, you consent to the tracking and storage of
your search data, which will be made available to researchers at NCH to conduct retrospective research studies.

Acknowledgement of Funding

Partially supported by National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes
of Health under Award UL1TR001070.

Development Team

The RE:fine Drugs application was developed by the Research Information
Solutions & Innovation department at Nationwide Children's Hospital.